Issue 59: From the Editor

You know, I had this great long intro all mapped out in my head regarding how nice it is that Spring has finally arrived and then I spent a weekend down in Lincoln City for their annual indoor kite festival and woke up to snow, slush, hail, rain and COLD nearly every day and that kind of has me wishing that Spring would actually arrive at some point soon. And, I know this weather hasn’t been solely in the Pacific Northwest either.

But, that being said, there are flowers blooming here and next week’s advance forecasts suggests that just maybe, Spring will actually arrive and the the weather will warm up. On that note, Sunday morning I woke up and checked various news web sites, only to find the 42nd Annual Smithsonian Kite Festival, held on the plaza by the Washington Monument had made the front page of CNN.com’s website. How cool is THAT? Nothing beats a little widescale exposure for our sport, and as it was happening at the same time as a cherry blossom festival, thats surely a sign of Spring too, much like when Daylight savings arrived and suddenly we had a bit more daylight every day.

And with that sort of clumsy segue on my part, if you attended the Smithsonian Festival (or for that matter, any festival that you may go to in the coming months, we’d love to hear about from you and in turn we’ll run it as a credited article so even more people can hear about it. While John is certainly making a valiant effort to have us fly at every single festival in the known universe over the next year, we can’t make them all, however, people love reading about them and sometimes, the reports can lead to more people coming out the next year for the festival. We witnessed this with South Padre Island’s festival this winter, with a few people deciding “Hey, that sounds like a fun winter trip…” For further information regarding what we’re looking for with an article submission, check the “Join The Team” section below.

This issue (April 2008) also marks 10 YEARS of Kitelife since it’s inception in April of 1998, a hefty milestone indeed… Now that I’m wrapping up my third issue at the helm, I’m certainly feeling somewhat more comfortable with the process and hopefully, those of you who read the magazine are as well. That being said, I’m always open to suggestions, comments, kudos or criticisms, so if you have anything you’d like to share with me, you can reach me easily at editor@kitelife.com . New ideas for stories? Columns? I’m all ears, just let me know. And thanks for reading!

And finally, take a look in our store too, we’ve added a few more designs that are printable on a huge amount of items, you can undoubtedly find something either for yourself or someone else to help add some kite related color into their lives.